CATS

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Vol. 11 No. 1
May 1993

CAT S
е Official Journal of the Capital

Presidential Ramblings

fe a ee a

Well, it appears that there is life in the old girl yet.
A turnout of 16 members, all of whom were full of
ideas about how and what should be done to keep
the group going made for a long session of idea-
voicing and discussion. At times it became difficult
to QL (quell) a vociferous member so that others
could have a chance at voicing their ideas.

We did not solve the problem of officering (if
there is such a verb) the club, but we sure came up
with a lot of ideas for workshops or presentations
or even articles for the newsletter. Thanks are due
to our arm-twister раг ехсейсисё, Tom Robbins,
who volunteered to again honcho the scheduling of
presentations, workshops, etc. He, more or less,
demanded that each person present tell what his
interest was and what he was prepared to pass on to
the membership, in some form or other.

A long overdue idea was voiced by Bob Diggs,
namely , that it was a problem for him(and
certainly others) to tear down his QL setup at
home, load it into the car, unload it at the library,
set it up, give a demo, tear it down, load it, unload
it at home, and set it up again. Awkward, difficult,
and something which could be made easier. The
club could have a setup - basic QL - available, so
that one would only need to bring special items to
make a presentation. Hey, everyone said, what a
great idea so suiting action to words, we (almost)
unanimously voted to purchase a QL, monitor, and
drives at an extremely attractive price. This will be
kept in the locked storeroom in a locked container--
just in case-- and will be used for presentations.

No one answered my question; Who wants to be

President?

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or

rea Timex,

CATS Page 1 May 1993

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inclair Users

NEWSLETTER

One theme voiced was the dissatisfaction with
structured meetings and the time lost, which were
better applied to technical interchange, demos, etc.
A business meeting every three meetings seemed
appropriate.

Re the newsletter, it will be issued several more
times with whatever articles are available(may be
SlimPickens) and it will probably continue as an on-
line newsletter with articles on file as they are
received. This idea pushes the art of modeming and
the next meeting will have a presentation on the use
of QLINK for our less modemwise members. More
to come on this.

Sharing! For all QL/QDOS users. Get-together in
Newport, RI, 5 June 1993, from 1PM to 6PM, at
the Salvation Army Building on Memorial
Boulevard. Sponsor is International QL Report.
Optional Dutch Treat Dinner (you pay) follows at
Newport Beach Club. Expected demonstrators/
attendees; Stuart Honeyball of Miracle Systems;
Frank Davis of Mechanical Affinity; Bill Cable of
Wood and Wind Computing; possibles are Freddy
Vachha of Digital Precision, Tony Firshman of TF
Services, and Dilwyn Jones of Dilwyn Jones
Computing. Demonstrations, tables to browse/buy
at, and a Q&A session. Pre-register at $3/person or
pay 5 at the door. Additional info from Bob Dyl at
401-849-3805.

We barely had time for Joe Miller to present his
swinging 2068 playing music. His hurried
exposition passed mostly right over my head, but I
am personally 2068-disadvantaged anyway. If you
want, Joe, we will give you more time for another
shot.

n

Last month a motion was made and
passed by a relatively large group
of members which would eliminate
monthly meetings for CATS, save for
quarterly catch-ups.

One of the members stated
emphatically he does not like to
sit through boring meetings, and
enough support was garnered to
cancel all but two or three
business sessions the rest of this
calendar year.

The same member declared that to
him the most important thing is the
group’s informal bull sessions each
month. "Business" is therefore
secondary and dispensible.

A reality check will show that the
CATS Bylaws clearly call for
monthly business meetings, among
other regularly scheduled
happenings. A serious deviation
such as this requires that an
amendment to the Bylaws be
proposed, published in the
newsletter, and affirmed or denied
a month later. So the motion passed
month has no actual standing until
it follows that path.

Nor should it.

CATS often has significant business
to transact, much of it
unpredictable as to when it will
occur and what it will contain. No
provision was made for this in last
month’s motion.

If business meetings currently last
too long, that is the joint
responsibiity of the management
(President) and the membership. It
is not necessary to hear what
everybody thinks about everything
all the time before doing anything.
A more practical approach would be
to limit such meetings to 30 or, at
most, 45 minutes. What doesn’t get
covered can be carried over to the
next month.

Conversely, if there are no
significant matters on the docket,
the President always has the option

of dispensing with a business
meeting altogether.
For while some members may chafe at
the thought of sitting through
parliamentary gyrations (rare
though they may be), there are many
more who expect a kind of structure
and substance from CATS that
exceeds endless, aimless bull
sessions.
We have made arrangements with the
library system to have the use of
the conference room at New
Carrollton library from noon
onwards, just for the purpose of
faciltating informal interchange.
In fact, we have been told we can
have the use of the room at 11 a.m.
if we want it, or even 10 a.m., for
that matter.
Last calender year, with the same
arrangements, nobody ever showed up
before noon. Travel considerations
of course entered into this, but
the point remains that the bull
sessions were largely unattended at
the early times, even though the
room was available.
So now the bull-throwers want to
jettison the CATS business
meetings?
That would be a giant step on the
path to degradation---and the
eventual extermination of CATS.
No longer will CATS be an
organization with a purpose and a
modicum of organizational
stability. It will simply be an
unannounced, random gathering of
people without a purpose, becoming
incrementally more unattractive as
time goes by.
It should be imperative that the
hard core of CATS enthusiasts
consider realistically the
consequences of what is being
proposed. For to follow that path
would accellerate dramatically the
certain demise of CATS as we know
it.

с.н.р.

CATS Page 2 Мау 1993

FUTURISTICS
by George Rey

Looking ahead is an art, useful if you wish to
optimize your time, money and efforts. I’ve
done it for a living. I also do it to survive. This
first of a series is to help bring into focus the
information exchange technologies that have and
will flood the planet. Your QL or PC is your
link, window, ticket or personal interactive
center to take advantage of new trends. Keep it.

Information is a common language of our
global village -- From the Gobi desert to the
high Andes you can find third world citizens
interacting with us in D.C., New York or L.A.,
through our videos and broadcasts.

As I see it there are three major technological
areas headed for convergence. These are
television, telecommunications, and computers.
Sight, sound, and шіпа (in the data processing
sense). Already being proposed are ’Information
Highways’. Such to be provided by our Cable,
Telephone, and Cellular Network companies.

The ideal convergence should result in a single
*Black Box’ capability to do what each service
can do alone and then more by doing all
together. Although this is coming rapidly I am
not sure there is a user market unless the cost is
reasonable. After all I still do not dole out
tribute fees for Cable-TV much less have an
IBM PC nor let my Bell pay my monthly bills
for a fee.

If CATS’ have nine lives my comments at the
April meeting should not of been interpreted in
an apocalyptic sense. Rather, as an urgency for
us to restructure, and we did a lot of it at the

meeting. As Captain Kirk would say "Our
mission is to search and explore the magic
"Black Box’.

What do we want a ’Box" to do? I for one
want video and audio with communications to
interface and interact with the world around me.
And, of course ГЇЇ need a central module (PC)
to bring it all together for me through these
‘Nova’ synthetic supplementing senses rather
than using my own and letting my module
(mind) make its own unaided analyses.

In the course of exploring all this I will raise
many questions for us to ponder -- especially
addressing the practicality of what’s being
offered at the time and price. We Sinclair users
are by definition prudent as well as practical
and we want our ’Ford’ at Model-T prices and
not at AT&T prices.

Hopefully, our club members will keep abreast
with info related to these converging areas and
tutor me some since I am not an electron.

As for Fax machines, I knew what a Fax was
before Xerox made them obsolete -- so it’s new
now? Like how? Is it more economical than the
mail? If so will it be the mailing medium of the
future? Considering my in-law paid $ 600 for
one it must be a wonder machine -- is it? Or
maybe its a fad? -

In my next article, Facts and Figures’, ГЇЇ
present some of the terminology I have run
across -- some of it is mind boggling but
interesting, provocative and holds promises. It
should leads us to note that there are really big
changes in the wind and as PC’ers we may be
able to tap into the ’Nova’ trends at reasonable
costs using our existing core systems.

CATS Page 3 May 1993

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CATS Newsletter
PO. Box 11017
Takoma Park, MD 20913

The next meeting of CATS will be held on: May 8, 1993
12:00 M Hardware Workshop
2:00 PM General Meeting

At: New Carrollton Public Library 7414 Riverdale Road (Hwy 410), New Carrollton, MD

IF YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER OF CATS. THIS IS THE ONLY ISSUE YO!) WILL
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